Why Cinema?

Why Cinema?

As my traditional day job at an international architecture firm here in Vietnam began to respond to the real estate development struggle that has surprised everyone, I was already in discussions with a robustly talented, medium-scale media production company, Mango Media, here in Ho Chi Minh City. Our discussion focused on creating a film that would tell the story of the Saigon South master-planning effort over its 20+ year history. Ultimately as stresses in the market and the impact on designers crept up, the project was placed on hold of course, and I found myself writing stories during my free time about all my professional and personal experiences here.

My new family at Mango Media approached me to consider my involvement in writing and directing a commercial for a popular product in Vietnam. I was excited by the new challenge, and soon enough, clear images began to flow through my mind and within a day or two, I had a story concept. The approach I took was not just about selling the products. It was a story about how this product became interwoven through a contemporary sampling of the Vietnamese people’s lives.

I've often been asked why I am taking on this radically different role. One that can be perceived as a departure from my decades of successful urban design and development planning and why not continue to contribute to the success of development across Asia. The comparison of my role in my base profession and this new ambition was easy and immediate:?

One day during my early?years at SOM San Francisco, I was busy photographing scale models that we Architects would build to enhance our presentations to clients. Marc Goldstein, the lead design partner, walked by the conference room we were shooting in, admiring the very professional array of lights, scrims, tripods, reflectors, and my overwhelmingly scaled Mamiya RZ67 medium format camera.

He took a solid glance at me and smiled and said, "you know if you see architecture as a photograph then you must see urban planning as motion pictures"!

I have never forgotten that, and it obviously touched my heart.

And what Marc said is true! When we plan a new city or complex mixed-use commercial development there are many factors (or actors if you see the parallel) that you always must engage to reach success. The journey through a "suite of spaces" (thank you Burton Miller for that poetic description) that are part of a creative strategy for organizing a more robust sequence of inspiring public spaces, is indeed like experiencing a sequence of events (or what we call “scenes”) in cinema. A successful sequence of spaces (or scenes) can become a powerful experience, hence the need for a great masterplan; or a great script in this new world I am dabbling in.

Everything I have done in my career is an expression of a series of ideas, and the objective is to create a collection of these ideas to become an inspiring story. David Lynch describes putting cinema together as writing down a series of ideas as they come to you on 3 x 5 cards. When you get around 70 of them, you now have a movie!?He is of course expressing it more confidently than I am experiencing it this first time out, but he is right!

I will always remember the day, during my ten-year tenure leading the HOK Planning Group in Hong Kong, my design team wanted to raise the bar on a presentation coming up for a unique project competition - ??in master planning the 17-km long Haitang Bay along the pristine coastline east of Sanya, China. The place was one of the last vestiges of traditional rural farm life: ?composed of golden fields in the harvesting time, against a dramatic purple-grey backdrop of mountains facing out to the seafront.

When I proposed doing a full film (like a documentary style but with more passion) the team was overwhelmed with excitement!

We took on a two-month-long journey, supported by a media group, but authored, and scripted, and scored by my new “family” of filmmakers.

We told a story of how delicate the natural setting was, and described the quality of the local people we met during our journey, who were hard-working stewards of their delicate farmlands and lived a bucolic life in these sensitively scaled villages. The message in the film could not be clearer: ?this unique island culture established a value for the country that would far outperform speculative high-rise development, in this unique situation. We realized that our film was more effective at telling that passionate story much better than we ever could - thumbing through a PowerPoint presentation!

The review committee at the presentation was moved to tears: we told them the truth with courage and expressed our commitment to our decision to tell the real story about that beautiful place that we felt very passionate about.

We won the competition, and later that year, received the AIA Award for Sustainability in Urban Design (the architecture profession’s version of the “Oscars”?)

There are so many creative avenues to consider walking down in both professions: master planning must have a powerful vision that compels, and shows great promise that will gain support and ultimately implementation. Cinema is an enhanced and more competitive parallel pathway due to its relatively subjective nature or at least more impressionistic. Both offer a dynamic and rich life experience…I have always been told you need talent and skill in both, but now I realize (in both) you also need commitment and courage!

Together, with my family at Mango Media, we now take a new journey, following a map that we typically refer to as a script, but like any planned journey through unfamiliar dense tropical forests, or an overwhelming vast desert landscape, spontaneous discovery is the fuel that excites and inspires and commands full engagement by everyone on the team.

If you are open-minded about responding to the sometimes surprising and sometimes challenging disruptions along this path, and you initiate a collaborative process that your family engages in, finding creative solutions or incorporating new inspirations from the experience, then you will reach your destination with a story enriched with more depth, and your family will have left behind a more memorable sequence of spaces – “scenes” as we say in the industry

As I engage in my new role of directing a story, now with actors to express these ideas that I've written, it can initially be an intimidating experience unless you approach it in this way: As a director, you must assume a leadership position - but this role can also become a softer parent-like figure, and then your actors now become part of a “family”, committed to each other’s success in delivering exceptional quality in the presentation of the story. It’s truly a beautiful experience!

I am still involved in developing good urban planning across Asia, instilling responsibility in the craft of urban design,?and helping this next generation of people here to be “future-ready”.

Expanding my creative energy into cinema is a step forward through my own journey – the passion for this craft began in my younger years hanging out on film sets in Los Angeles when I would spend summers with my aunts and uncles who worked there.

I am now supported by a dynamic new family and we are pushing ahead to help the real story of this beautiful place and the people who are the essence of the spirit of Vietnam. The story wants to be taken into the light in the context of progress, to become a record of the benevolent process that enabled a resilient and proud cultural development here, and an overall enhancement of the quality of life!

Thank you, People of Vietnam! Stay strong! and never give up! ?I love you all!

Steven Townsend?